I currently run debian on my desktop, and while it's a nice distro (for example, stable versions are supported for years and updates don't break things), but one downside is that the software isn't exactly up-to-date, plus Lutris isn't in the repository. So, I am wondering what distro you would suggest that would work well to dual boot with debian. (Note that Windows isn't in the picture.)

Requirements:
* Must be a well-supported distro that is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. (This usually means it should be one of the more popular distros.)
* Must have recent WINE (6.0 or later) in the repository, and I'd also like to get Lutris from there as well. (I would rather not add a non-distro repository.) Also, it's preferred if other software is also recent here.
* Must play well with debian in a dual-boot setting. (I still want debian for stuff I can't afford to have break, and for a stable option in general, particularly if the *other* installed OS were to break, so I could chroot into it without having to get a live USB stick.)
* I would prefer not to have to do constant maintainance to the system. (That's one issue with Arch/Gentoo, unless someone says it's not so bad; not running updates for a few months could cause issues.)

Worth noting that installation difficulty isn't a significant issue here; I *have* successfully installed Gentoo in the past.

I'm thinking Ubuntu or Arch at the moment. How do those distros sound? (In particular, how much work is it to maintain Arch in comparison to, say, Gentoo?)

Also, any pointers for setting up a dual-boot between debian and the other distro? (Assume that debian is installed first.)

Any particular reason you're not simply building the latest WINE from source?
Does it require many libraries in newer versions than Debian's repos supply?

Otherwise, I would have suggested Debian Sid, but as far as I can tell, that comes with WINE 5.
So does Ubuntu it seems to me.

So a bleeding edge distro is probably needed, if building from source is out of the question.
Arch if you have time for maintenance. OpenSuSE Tumbleweed, if you don't.

How friendly they'll be with sharing your /home partition (which I expect is what you're after) with Debian, I couldn't say.

As for dual booting, it's mostly trivial. The installer should detect Debian and set it up so you select the one you want at boot time.
If you don't need to share /home between them, that's all there is to it.
If you do want them to use the same /home, you may encounter a few issues with some config files not being 100% percent compatible with different versions of their respective applications.
User and group permissions could also be an issue in the "old days", but I hope the distros have somewhat standardized those since I last dual booted distros a loooong time ago.

Why not? I've been using the official Ubuntu repository from WineHQ for years, because I'm too lazy to compile Wine-Staging myself (I actually did in the past, when I was doing regression testing, but then realized it's way more practical to use the repo for day to day use). You won't find any distro that packs Wine faster than the devs do.

When debian testing is under freeze (which it is currently), unstable tends to also freeze at the same time.

Also, sometimes I want software that isn't in debian's repository, like lutris, for example.

Is it really necessary to install Wine from a distro's repository? Why do you not want to use WineHQ instead? As far as I know, it offers the latest version of Wine for Debian.

Personally, I use WineHQ ( development ) + dxvk on Kubuntu LTS. Almost all games run perfectly on default prefix with no need to adjust any settings.

Few games ( Beyond Good & Evil, Obduction ) require dedicated prefix with some additional libraries. It does not take much time to find and install them.

I don't install Wine updates while I am playing a game, to make sure they will not break anything ( comment out WineHQ repository in the apt settings ). So, I update Wine every 3 - 4 months.

Here are some thoughts and experiences from gaming on Arch.

Distro - If going the Arch route, you will certainly get bleeding edge versions and updates. Lutris is also in the repos. And if you can't wait a few days/a week, you could install the git version from AUR and compile it. But I think that's wholly unnecessary as the repos get them so quickly. And you wanted things in the repos anyways. The current wine version is already 6.7.

Arch also opens up a few convenient possibilities - namely custom Wine options from TkG that you can opt into and then compile the whole thing. If you also add Fsync/futex patches to a custom Linux kernel, then you can get that working too, which reduces some stuttering. Though admittedly, all of this can be obtained on most other distros with some extra legwork. I think Manjaro even has the futex patches now included in their kernels already. Anyways, the point is on Arch, you can get all of kinds of bleeding edge performance upgrades easily and quickly, should you so choose.

And if installation complexity is no issue, then might as well skip Manjaro and go pure Arch.

I don't really recommend Ubuntus anymore for gaming needs - the extra hassle with Nvidia drivers for example is annoying. Yet, it's not so bad as it's still Linux ;) I'm sure it can be worked through.

Maintenance - Yes, it's possible rolling release bleeding edge packages cause breakage. But there's also the other side of the coin - updates fix bugs and regressions so getting them quickly makes thing smoother. I'm of the latter school of thought and have in fact had a much smoother experience on Arch than ever on *ubuntus or manjaro. And if you for some reason don't want to update weekly or whatever, you certainly have that option, I don't see it being very different from maintaining an LTS distro, except for some people vetting and testing the new updates somewhat.

Dual/Multi-boot - Can't help much here. I've only installed different distros on separate hard drives. I still currently actually have Manjaro installed on a different SSD, whereas my main os Arch is on my NVME. This works, but I have to change the booting drive in the BIOS if I want Manjaro. I never bothered to get it working more elegantly as I don't even use Manjaro anymore at all. I'm sure there's a way though mucking about with GRUB and uefi boot partitions.

What is the extra hassle there, compared to other Linux distros?

In Linux Mint (Ubuntu-based), I see I have to use the "Driver Manager" to select whether I use the official closed-source NVidia drivers, or the open source third-party Nouveau drivers. Also apparently NVidia will stop offering any official drivers for older NVidia GPUs in some Linux release (ie. phasing out Linux support for older GPUs; I presume they do the same for Windows, e.g. they don't necessarily offer Windows 10 compatible drivers for some 10+ years old NVidia GPUs), meaning that upgrading to a newer (Linux Mint) release might mean you can only use the open-source Nouveau driver for your older NVidia GPU, which tends to be slower than NVidia's own driver.

Is this somehow different in some other non-Ubuntu Linux distros? I thought AMD is the preferred GPU in pretty much all Linux distros, as they offer official open-source drivers (or so I've understood).

Go with Opensuse Tumbleweed, it's rather hands off and stable.
It is bleeding edge so most everything is pretty new but it is tested.

Fedora.

I just upgraded to 34 yesterday and things are pretty dang smooth. They'll have just released it pretty soon, so now would be optimal to jump in. They'll be introducing an i3 Spin, which is a great, "Get the hell out of my way" option.

The current Wine is 6.6, and there often are RC test releases on offer.

Lutris is in the repos, and appears to be the latest version (0.5.8.3.)

Fedora is not rolling. It has a 13 month support cycle. It uses a lot of cutting edge technology, being one of the first to have introduced Wayland to mainstream.

Fedora doesn't have staleness or a gimmick. The COPR is centralized like the AUR. There is support for Flatpak, Snap, and Appimages. There are several desktops to pick from. (No stupid spin of "each desktop is a distro")

It's based off the legendary Red Hat, but doesn't have the paid support, while keeping the independent community.

As for the matter of dual booting, you could give Refind a try, if Grub2 gives you trouble.

Lutris is in Debian Bullseye (future Debian 11) repositories, and in Debian Buster (current Debian 10) backports repositories,

Yes, indeed. Mesa drivers for Radeon are the best in terms of quality, stability and performance among all graphics drivers I've ever used for any GPU on any operating system.

OK. Just installed it.

(The desktop is currently running bullseye, so installing it was just one apt-get away.)

By the way, for the other distro, I actually am also considering Fedora (though if lutris works well this way it may not be necessary). I did use Red Hat (not Enterprise) Linux a long time ago, but switched due to the lack of automatic package management (yum and dnf weren't around back then, but debian already had apt-get).

Personally, I find that Intel GPUs work really well under Linux.

(Currently running HD 4600 grahpcis. Thinking of getting a budget discrete AMD graphics card, but now isn't the best time to do that.) Replying here so that it appears in your notifications.

As I said, I *am* actually considering Fedora. I did use Red Hat before Fedora was a thing, but swtiched because of the lack of dependency resolution in the package manager, but I assume that problem has been fixed by yum and dnf.

Good to know that I'm not locked to GNOME for the desktop if I go with Fedora.

Yeah, DNF has dependency resolution. At most you'll need to rarely invoke --allowerasing for packages which cannot coexist. (Pulseaudio and Pipewire, for example.)

As a snide aside, even if you started with Gnome, literally nothing would stop you from installing another desktop and then ripping out every last trace of Gnome and casting it to the pit.

Anyway, I've decided to do a test install of dual-boot Debian/Fedora in a VM. Virtual Machines are handy for things like this; can try things out, and don't have to worry about having my real system be unbootable.

(Using debian 10 and fedora 34 beta; the actual installation would probably be debian 11 and fedora 34 final if I decide to go this route.)

I think it is incorrect to say Fedora is based on Red Hat, when it is really vice versa. Fedora is basically the alpha or beta test version of some future RHEL release (which is why I personally stopped using Fedora in the past due to stability problems; I later used CentOS but now IBM/RedHat has pretty much killed it).

Like RedHat itself describes Fedora:

https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/linux/fedora-vs-red-hat-enterprise-linux So, yeah, it is a bit like playing in-dev games: you get to play the latest games, but don't be surprised if there are e.g. stability issues or non-working features because it is basically still work in progress. You are one of the testers.

I guess that is one of the reasons why Fedora seems to be pretty much non-existent in the corporate server world, while CentOS (which is/was based on RHEL) was very widely used. Well, at least until RedHat killed CentOS 8... I guess some server admins now use the free Oracle Enterprise Linux 8 as a substitute, or migrate away from the RHEL family. Maybe a few weirdos actually pay for the official RHEL8 support, dunno...